Ramsey Psalter

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Beatus initial
, f.4, start of Psalm 1
Tinted drawing of the Crucifixion, f.3v, the only such page
The other very large initial, start of Psalm 101 (102)

The Psalter of Oswald also called the Ramsey Psalter (

Benedictine monastery of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire), or for the personal use of Ramsey's founder St Oswald
.

The

St Benedict of Nursia, and at the time of writing, probably before Oswald's death in 992, Ramsey was the only English monastery dedicated to this saint. A "Psalter of St Oswald" was listed in a 14th-century catalogue of the library at Ramsey.[2] This manuscript is not to be confused with another Ramsey Psalter in the Morgan Library & Museum
, New York (MS M. 302), made between 1286 and 1316.

The text is a

calligrapher Edward Johnston.[3]

The two most famous illuminated pages are at the start of the manuscript and are illustrated here and discussed below. Apart from another very large illuminated initial at the start of Psalm 101, the rest of the illumination consists of smaller decorated initials with colour at the start of each psalm, and gold initials for each verse.[4]

Illumination

Unsurprisingly for a manuscript with such strong connections to Oswald, a leader of the

Beatus initial of Psalm 1 and the "D" at Psalm 101.[6]

The artist of the Crucifixion miniature seems also to have worked at Fleury Abbey, where both Oswald and his uncle, Archbishop Oda of Canterbury, had trained,[7] as well as the Abbey of Saint Bertin, Saint-Omer, both of these in France. At St Bertin he worked on the Boulogne Gospels (municipal library there, MS 11) and at Fleury on the Harley Aratea (BL, Harley MS 2506).[8]

The figure of Christ is very similar to that on an Anglo-Saxon reliquary cross in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was set on a small reliquary in Germany around 1000.[9] The Beatus initial appears to be the first to use the "lion-mask" in the bridge,[10] which was to be widely copied in England and abroad.[11]

Notes

  1. ^ Brown, 119
  2. ^ BL
  3. ^ Brown, 120
  4. ^ BL
  5. ^ Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 60
  6. ^ Pächt, 86
  7. ^ Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 60
  8. ISBN 0300064934
  9. ^ Wilson, David M.; Anglo-Saxon Art: From The Seventh Century To The Norman Conquest, pp. 194-195, Thames and Hudson (US edn. Overlook Press), 1984.
  10. ISBN 9780714128092; Brown, 119; for example there is a mask in the very similar drawn Beatus initial in the Winchcombe Psalter, Cambridge University Library
    , MS Ff.1.23, f. 5, dated 2nd quarter of the 11th century, see: Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 78 and illustrated at 80.
  11. ^ Pächt, 86-89

References

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Psalter of Oswald (c.975-1000) - BL Harley MS 2904.
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